This Is How the 99 Percent Becomes the 100 Percent

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OCCUPY EVERYWHERE /// If there is going to be a movement beyond this initial Big Bang, it is going to come from all over. (Photo via Facebook)

There are two tents here in Liberty Square in downtown Louisville. There are two tents and seven people on a cloudy autumn afternoon that is holding the Indian summer sun to a draw, a breeze off the river putting only a slight edge on the noonday chill. There are two tents and two picnic tables and seven people here on the campsite of Occupy Louisville, which is located across the street from the Metro Louisville House of Correction. There are no police to be seen.

So far, there has been no violence here, no massive marches, and nothing to put Occupy Louisville on the news. No celebrities turn out at the picnic tables in the little park. They made their debut on October 7, when they organized a march from a satellite campus of the University of Louisville to an encampment that had sprung up downtown. Anybody who sees the Occupy movement as merely a whole lot of people taking their wounded egos out for a walk would do well to come here, where there is nothing going on except anonymous commitment to the essential value of small actions against larger forces and, through that, becoming part of something larger in the country beyond the river.

"I don't find it hard to feel connected to the folks in New York at all," explains Alan Rosedale, a former Louisville radio personality — nom de jock, Alan Young — who lost his last job, as a courier for a downtown bank, because his bosses were not fond either of his opinions, or his willingness to express them. "I find all of the other locations are in solidarity and in support. While Occupy Wall Street might have a larger movement, we're here in support of that movement. We might be limited in what we're able to accomplish in this area right here, whether it be due to low turnout or otherwise, we're still in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street."

They've been a nomadic bunch. They got bounced out of their first campsite, a privately owned park, and they moved to the Belvedere, an open area along the river. Then they got permission to camp in Liberty Square, so they packed up again and hauled everything to their current site. "It was kind of an arduous process," says Pam Newman, a young woman who signed onto Occupy Louisville through a friend who had contacted her through Facebook. "I don't think it matters if we're part of what other people see around the country. It's the way we feel in our hearts that really moves us. The issues are just as relevant to us here in Louisville, Kentucky, as they are to the people in Chicago or New York."

If there is going to be an Occupy movement beyond this initial Big Bang of a moment, it is going to come because people like Pam Newman brought it to places like Louisville, and Elkhart in Indiana, where a guy named Tom Wiley wrote to his local paper, "I know the people who are "occupying" Elkhart. They range in age from 18 to 73. They are working people, employed single mothers, veterans, students, those who have been laid off." Or in places like El Paso, where a Bank Transfer Day has brought a windfall to 10 local credit unions because the people there pulled their money out of the fee-laden swamp of major banks, and deposited it in places where they can keep an eye on it, and the people handling it, and where anyone who wants to steal it probably has to go to the trouble of buying a mask and a gun.

That's a movement, not merely a TV show. There's already talk of a general gathering of Pam Newmans and Alan Rosedales from around the country, maybe in Philadelphia, to produce the "coherent political agenda" that various superstar pundits have been whining about since the first tents went up. Until then, there are two tents and seven people in Liberty Square in Louisville and, around them, quietly, workmen are hanging the lights of the holiday season from the bare branches of the trees.